Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

I'm inclined to regard talk of judgement of who is a "great mathematician", who is the "greatest mathematician" and so on as mathematical criticism. And I'm inclined to regard mathematical critics in the same way G. H. Hardy did, as he explained in A Mathematician's Apology [1].

To put the matter more bluntly: if the pilots of Top Gun were in the business of criticism, there wouldn't be any left because they'd blow each other to bits.

I think mathematicians and other high achievers should rather consider their relation to the Mary Sue and their domain of expertise as a LARP. Nobody likes a Mary Sue, nobody likes a Spock. And everyone should remember what rock music has to say about the fortunate sons who can aspire to the Mary Sue, Fortunate Son by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

[1] https://archive.org/details/AMathematiciansApology/page/n29




What does this comment mean?


It reads like someone's playing around with a natural language generator.


ah you're just pessimistic about licking this marysueism

mathematicians aren't a bunch of marysues, and you're never going to recruit carrying on that way

you don't see the value in getting rid of it so mathematicians aren't burdened this way

as if their burdens weren't great enough




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: